evolved's 190g DSA Reef: Wrasse Retreat

Daniel@R2R · Jan 1, 2017

evolved said:
Here we are, the end of the road. I finally have the last set of photos available; these were taken on August 8th, about a week before the tank was taken down.

A few sad bits to report from the past that I noticed I never posted about here. I did lose both the earlei and the old lineatus in the final months of this tank. I suspect internal parasites on both, but it's also quite possible they were old and simply at the end of life. Both went out the same way, slowly withering away over a 6 week period.

But onto better times. Here's the last look at this tank, and you'll see how extreme a Pocillopora invasion can be when it gets the upper hand on you. :rolleyes:

WOW!! Awesome update, Hunter!!

evolved · Jan 1, 2017

evolved · Jan 1, 2017

All that rock looks funny in a stock tank without any corals:

Abalone's are really hard to remove from a rock. I gave up after leaving this guy sit out of the water for 15 minutes; I put it back into the tank a grabbed him later when he was on the glass (by using a couple credit cards):

Which, finally brings us to:

That's all folks!!!
(the new tank build thread is here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/wrasse-retreat-2-0-evolveds-270g-peninsula.256483/) View attachment 20160819_115531.jpg View attachment 20160819_162256.jpg

Salty1962 · Jan 2, 2017

Awesome!

Myka · Jan 2, 2017

The pic of the abalone and the pic of the rock tub show up for me at first when they load, then they disappear. Not sure if that's something you did when uploading or something on my end...?

Wow hunter, that is an EPIC Pocci takeover! I've not seen it that bad before! What did you do to kill it off the rock? Or did you set up the new tank with new rock? Sorry to hear about the Erlei and the Lineatus. How old were they? Do you have a final fish list at shutdown?

evolved · Jan 2, 2017

mdbannister said:
WOW!! Awesome update, Hunter!!

Thanks Daniel!

Salty1962 said:
Awesome!

Thank you!

Myka said:
The pic of the abalone and the pic of the rock tub show up for me at first when they load, then they disappear. Not sure if that's something you did when uploading or something on my end...?

I was fighting with those uploads last night; it should be good now.

Myka said:
Wow hunter, that is an EPIC Pocci takeover! I've not seen it that bad before! What did you do to kill it off the rock? Or did you set up the new tank with new rock? Sorry to hear about the Erlei and the Lineatus. How old were they? Do you have a final fish list at shutdown?

Clearly I made it really happy.... :rolleyes: Had it not looked awesome under actinics, I would have pulled my hair out long ago.
I didn't kill it off the rock; I left it all behind and sold it off to someone else, with plenty of warning of what they were inheriting. The rock you saw in this post was all new dry Marco which cycled for about 4 months in that same stock tank before going into the new tank.
The lineatus was 4+ years, and he was a grown adult when I acquired him, so I can't speak to it's exact age. The earlei I bought as a small juvi and grew it into the terminal male you saw in this thread over a 4 year period.
Final fish list (I think):
A. femininus
P. octotaenia
C. isosceles
C. johnsoni
C. claire
H. timorensis
M. lapillus (x2)
C. tominiensis
A. ocellaris (x2)

Myka · Jan 4, 2017

evolved said:
I was fighting with those uploads last night; it should be good now.

Yes, I can see them "permanently" now. :)

evolved said:
Clearly I made it really happy.... :rolleyes: Had it not looked awesome under actinics, I would have pulled my hair out long ago.
I didn't kill it off the rock; I left it all behind and sold it off to someone else, with plenty of warning of what they were inheriting. The rock you saw in this post was all new dry Marco which cycled for about 4 months in that same stock tank before going into the new tank.
The lineatus was 4+ years, and he was a grown adult when I acquired him, so I can't speak to it's exact age. The earlei I bought as a small juvi and grew it into the terminal male you saw in this thread over a 4 year period.
Final fish list (I think):
A. femininus
P. octotaenia
C. isosceles
C. johnsoni
C. claire
H. timorensis
M. lapillus (x2)
C. tominiensis
A. ocellaris (x2)

How are you liking the Marco rock? Around here we don't consider it to be good rock as it's much heavier and less porous than the dried Pukani we have here. I ask because the Pukani supplier in Canada quit the business, so I may have to start using Marco in client tanks that I can't convince to use live rock. :D

Hmm, you'd think the Earlei would have a longer life span, wouldn't you? Hard to say with the Lineatus since he was already terminal. I'm not familiar with the life spans of "reef-safe" wrasses. I know Tangs and Clownfish can hit 20-30+ years, though many Gobies only live a few years. Regardless, still a respectable fish list. :D

evolved · Jan 4, 2017

Myka said:
How are you liking the Marco rock? Around here we don't consider it to be good rock as it's much heavier and less porous than the dried Pukani we have here. I ask because the Pukani supplier in Canada quit the business, so I may have to start using Marco in client tanks that I can't convince to use live rock. :D

I'm happy with the Marco; I found it to be pretty porous. Sure, it's not quite as porous as Pukani, but I've found Pukani to have a lot of dead junk on it too.

Myka said:
Hmm, you'd think the Earlei would have a longer life span, wouldn't you? Hard to say with the Lineatus since he was already terminal. I'm not familiar with the life spans of "reef-safe" wrasses. I know Tangs and Clownfish can hit 20-30+ years, though many Gobies only live a few years. Regardless, still a respectable fish list. :D

I would tend to agree, and felt there was still life left in the fish. But I questioned if age acceleration may have come into play, being in a tank a few degrees warmer than the waters they're found.
We don't really know what the natural lifespans for Cirrhilabrus are, but I feel that 6-7 years is probably in the ballpark.

Paul87 · Jan 4, 2017

Sorry to hear about loosing those fish. I enjoyed the last photo dumps of this thread. That pectinia is bright!

evolved · Jan 4, 2017

Paul87 said:
Sorry to hear about loosing those fish. I enjoyed the last photo dumps of this thread.

Thanks Paul. :)

Paul87 said:
That pectinia is bright!

So funny story about that... o_O
If you're building a house and not testing parameters for months and your Alk slowly creeps up to 12, apparently Pectinia is the first to go. :rolleyes:
If you look closely at the photos of it here, there are little spots of skeleton showing at various points all over it. I didn't know it here, but it was already doomed when I took those photos.
Luckily it acted as a good canary, and I didn't have any other losses. I just shut off the CO2 to the calcium reactor and let things ride for the last week.
(I grabbed another frag of it at MACNA, so I have it back in the new tank.)

Paul87 · Jan 4, 2017

evolved said:
Thanks Paul. :)

So funny story about that... o_O
If you're building a house and not testing parameters for months and your Alk slowly creeps up to 12, apparently Pectinia is the first to go. :rolleyes:
If you look closely at the photos of it here, there are little spots of skeleton showing at various points all over it. I didn't know it here, but it was already doomed when I took those photos.
Luckily it acted as a good canary, and I didn't have any other losses. I just shut off the CO2 to the calcium reactor and let things ride for the last week.
(I grabbed another frag of it at MACNA, so I have it back in the new tank.)

Well darn. At least it was all you lost. Do they seem to grow equally horizontal as they do vertically? I'm sure lighting and flow play a role. I've seen a few like this one that really "pop" in color. Good luck with the frag!

evolved · Jan 4, 2017

Paul87 said:
Well darn. At least it was all you lost. Do they seem to grow equally horizontal as they do vertically? I'm sure lighting and flow play a role. I've seen a few like this one that really "pop" in color. Good luck with the frag!

Pretty much equal grow in both directions, but it needs a good 6" of room all around. EVIL sweepers.
The trick with the space invader variety is it actually needs a fair amount of light. Too little and it's drab.

Frankyrivera · Jan 4, 2017

New tank and house pics please

Myka · Jan 4, 2017

evolved said:
I'm happy with the Marco; I found it to be pretty porous. Sure, it's not quite as porous as Pukani, but I've found Pukani to have a lot of dead junk on it too.

Good to hear about the Marco. :) Yes, absolutely the Pukani is LOADED with dead stuff - it's a HARD cycle. Marco you can dump a bottle of bacteria in and you're good to go.

evolved said:
I would tend to agree, and felt there was still life left in the fish. But I questioned if age acceleration may have come into play, being in a tank a few degrees warmer than the waters they're found.
We don't really know what the natural lifespans for Cirrhilabrus are, but I feel that 6-7 years is probably in the ballpark.

I hope they have more than that in them! I want my Johnsoni to live forever. They are so beautiful!